


Morning in Moromorsk

by simulare



Category: Original Work
Genre: Fictional Geography, Gore, Government Experimentation, Other, Survival Horror
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-09
Updated: 2019-06-09
Packaged: 2020-04-23 12:18:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19150888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/simulare/pseuds/simulare
Summary: The year is 1942. The newly-founded state of Moromorsk is celebrating its 15th year of independence. In the far north there stands the nation’s most efficient youth work camp. Between the rubble and flames of the war, the steel-solid building emerged with the simple name of “the Stonehouse.”





	Morning in Moromorsk

The morning was pitch dark but the sun was rising.

The Stonehouse stood still; unmoving as it always was for the past twenty years. Those who lived in side barely moved either - rigid and lined in rows in the damp 6AM air.

The sound of the national anthem was white noise in Pavel's ears and the words left his frostbitten lips without a thought in his mind. He cast a sideways glance to his equally-as-pale friend, Ivan, who was trembling either from the temperature or his ferocious anxieties. The dull rifle in his palms shook too, so hard that Pavel thought the bullets may fall out of the barrel.

The anthem silenced and Ivan stood atop the grey platform. In front of the two hundred freezing children in the blue-black Winter darkness.

Two guards escorted him - one was yawning loudly, the other hungover - and they led him to three nearly-limp, kneeling bodies. They were bent over with their noses almost touching the rock beneath them. Bags were nestled tightly around their heads so the crowd couldn't even see their wasted faces if they wanted to.

"War criminals," a dirt-coloured boy said wisely. "The wolves dragged 'em in two days ago, didn't y'see? Pavel sawr it."

Eight sets of eyes stared at him curiously but he didn't say anything in response. He was never one for bragging, especially not about the disjointed bodies he witnessed being dragged into the kennel that night.

The rifle was cocked.

"D'you reckon they'd let us eat 'em?" He asked in his strange accent. "After, I mean. They're only traitors 'n' I've been starving for days."

"We're not flesh-eaters," Pavel responded in almost a whisper. He was terrified of anybody hearing him.

"S'pose not."

All eyes turned feverishly back to the stage coated in gold and scarlet flags. A speech was to be made by the important Commander and if it took any longer, the rest of the officers might freeze over.

The Commander was snug in his uniform, however. It was tailored to perfection, with the buttons glistening despite the lack of sunlight. His cuffs were tapered and rich red, with a high-rise collar and a jacket covered in silver pins.

"Enemies of the state," he pronounced loudly to the crowd. "That is what they are. They abandoned their posts deep into the night, robbed their camp of supplies and fled like the cowards they are. They felt no mercy for their country - we feel no mercy for them."

The Commander sauntered to the hollow silhouettes. With his crisp white glove, he ever-so-carefully removed each potato sack and tossed it off-stage.

The boys revealed had jutting cheekbones and barely describable features between the dark scars and bruises. Number Two's head still was hung, rolling around his neck until The Commander seized a clump of his hair. The clean-shaved man proudly showed him off as if he was a prize obtained during a hunting trip.

He gave the face one last tight squeeze before dropping it and removing his gloves, a look of clear disgust on his face.

"Proceed, boy."

Ivan rose the rifle, letting it nestle uncomfortably in his arm as he aimed. He didn't cope very well with public performances (especially one of this calibre) but the ashy blonde was one Hell of a shot.

The three bullets were rattled off instantly, one after the other. Pavel had little time to blink between them. Nobody even had time to scream for their bare lives. 

When he opened his eyes again, he saw the violent splatter of blood against Ivan's face and down his khaki uniform. The chunks of brain were already laying around his newly-polished boots, with the lumps of skin flying off somewhere into the distance to settle in the snow. Pavel looked horrified for a fleeting moment. The dislocated olive eye hanging by a tendon from Number Three's head stared at him.

The bodies fell onto their fronts one by one, letting their leftover pieces of face and insides splay out across the front row. The dark liquid dripped from their mouths into the sleet of pure snow below.

The Commander didn't stick around long - he never did. The sight of the Stonehouse and its occupants was an unpleasant sight, although it made him thankful that his own son wasn't in an institution so grim.

The crowd dispersed with the sound of scuffling, pushing past each other roughly and screaming obscenities at one another. Pavel held his own against the boys shoving against him; he was waiting for Ivan to climb down off the steps of the stage and shake the shock from his body.

"You don't have to wait for me, you know," the boy called from across the desolate yard.

"I know," Pavel said with half-certainty, preoccupied with the corpses being taken away.

Pale girls hidden behind masks floated quietly, circling around the three dead. Their hair was an array of colours, pulled into tight buns that sat unmoving atop their pretty heads. Their skirts flayed violently outwards and trailed the ground beneath them, stained with debris and entrails. Their bare hands grasped at the limp body parts; they were hauled onto stretchers and removed from sight.

"I'll have to scrub my uniform clean again."

"It was a clean shot, though."

"Not clean enough, apparently."

Ivan was rather clueless when he first arrived at the Stonehouse. He was scared of the other boys, he didn't know how to wash or fold his own clothes. He learned, of course, albeit clumsily. Pavel helped sometimes.

"Did The Commander know your father?" He asked Ivan.

His friend nodded silently and solemnly in return.

"And that's why you got to shoot the gun?"

Another nod.

"That explains it, then."

It was Sunday. Which meant (aside from it being the morning of execution) Pavel and Ivan had to guard the fence.

The fences of the Stonehouse went up at least fifteen feet; they were made of tight coils of iron and it was all coated in keen-edged barb wire. From the sharp overhang, the flags of enemies - flesh-eaters, other nations and rebel groups - were snagged proudly on the hooks of the wire.

As the boys ascended up the nearby watchtower, Pavel gazed at all of the flags and the skulls that accompanied them, also dangling from the wall. He remembered last Summer when they were glazed with flesh, hair and lifeless eyes. The smell of the rot filled his nose every Sunday morning.

They reached the top and Pavel swore he could see the world from up there. He saw acres of the woods that went out, until it dissipated into the dark mountains. Distantly he saw a thick rope of smoke spewing from a stone-brick chimney. The houses dotted around the outside of the blackening forest were familiar to him. He spent his childhood in those quiet, secluded cottages. Pavel almost felt the warmth off of the faraway fireplace.

Ivan was less impressed as he angled his gun out of the tower, aiming at nothing in particular with a steely expression.

After a moment of silence, Ivan asked, "That's where you grew up?"

Pavel turned his head to stare at him. His friend was a very secluded person - he got deathly homesick at the mention of their original homes. Ivan only ever said his dad was a military official, before his bloody death at the hands of a terrorist attack at the border. Otherwise, it had been nothing. His eyes grew grim whenever one mentioned it.

"Yes."

"Have you got any ocean over there?"

"Ocean?" He echoed dumbly.

"You know - the sea."

Pavel went quiet, embarrassed. Ivan seemed to know everything - he could read, write, name all of Moromorsk's cities and villages and animals. He pointed out the individual flowers outside of the barbed fence and recited their names like it was poetry. Now he mentioned a concept so foreign that Pavel didn't know whether or not to believe it.

"It's a pool of water. It's like a lake, but it's a million feet deep and a million feet wide and a million feet long. It goes on forever."

"You're lying."

"I'm not."

Pavel paused, unwilling to look like a fool but slowly believing his close friend nevertheless.

"Promise?"

"I promise."

He screwed up his face in response. He was still hesitant to believe it, but a part of him desperately wanted to. He wasn't entirely sure why.

"I used to live by the ocean, you know," Ivan said in a dangerously low voice. "Our house was right by the beach - which is a big patch of sand by the sea. It's got little white rocks hidden in the sand called seashells. And the sun shines twice as bright."

Pavel looked at his face to make sure he was telling the truth. His eyes were glazed over with nostalgia, as if he was in another place during another time. As if he felt the salty breath of the ocean come down upon his face, cleansing him of the sin of this place, and dragging him back into the wide ocean where he'd float forever.

He believed him.

"Well there's no sea where I come from," Pavel concluded.

He leaned against an oak pillar of the guard tower, brain still elsewhere. He cleared his throat and continued, "There was a river, though. Isn't that close enough?"

His friend hummed in response, too polite to tell him "no".

A low and thundering march made its way towards the fences, pulling the boys away from the ocean and back to Stonehouse. The sight of deep rogue flags hung from uniforms and flagpoles; they were tattered but still recognisable. The military mutts circled the rigid soldiers' linear rows with menacing glares.

A buzz emitted from the gate and it swung open solemnly and stocky young man all dressed in a doctors uniform was pushing a half-broken wheelbarrow into the yard. Its contents were lumpy and  covered by a sheet that was tinted dirty yellow. A set of matte boots hung from the side.

"George's brother," Ivan said blankly. He knew the boy had turned seventeen only a few months ago and had been taken away to guard the border. He made it home, although it wasn't all in one piece.

Pavel stared at the wheelbarrow. He flinched as the bodies were dumped onto the concrete with a thud, and they rolled slightly before resting in the frost. The dogs sniffed at the reeking corpses adamantly.

The grizzly soldiers who had survived left with green faces.

George's brother had the same distinct mass of red hair atop his head, although said head was no longer attached to his body. A dog lapped at the wound extending along his disembodied neck. The skin had gone blue.

A huddling clump of dress-clad girls brushed past the iron doors of the Stonehouse dormitories, mute and ghastly. They had faces of blankness behind their masks and buckets swung in their frozen little hands, the water sloshing out of the sides every so often.

Their beige and buckled shoes stepped over the pools of red gently, the skirt adding to its collection of dark stains. The mutts nipped at the trailing fabric.

"Those dogs are hungry, they'll end up _eating_ the Ghosts," Pavel commented as he stared down at them. Ivan looked over his shoulder from his rifle scope and vaguely shrugged.

The Ghosts lifted the corpses, one by one, their intention to take them to the Stonehouse's makeshift crematorium; to strip them of uniforms and weapons and burn their bodies. The Stonehouse always smelled of burning bodies.

The last girl was given the task of collecting the red head's scattered limbs, placing them all on a stretcher that sagged with dead weight.

Her attempts to pick up the head, however, seemed futile as the dark-furred mutt snapped its jaw at her fingers. She violently reeled back her arm, distressed. She looked around for the other Ghosts but they were already gone. The iron doors were swinging after them.

She pulled down her mask. She was flushed red and desperate to breathe. The mutt gave her no opportunity to as it grumbled from the pits within its empty stomach.

As the Ghost crept back, the wolfish animal lunged forward and it bared fangs that hadn't touched meat in days. It quietly stalked towards the sickly-pale blonde who was growing more frantic by the minute.

Ivan had returned to his post, hunched over his gun, looking out into nowhere. He yelled out as his body was seized by Pavel, who spun him around. The boy pointed shakily at the ongoing conflict.

"Shoot that thing, dammit!" He cried out. He was unsure of what came over him in that moment.

"Alright, alright!" The other responded at equal volume. He raised his arm, holding his rifle as steady as possible as he aimed at the mutt's head, quietly calculating. The Ghost let out a strangled cry as Ivan took the shot.

The bullet drove right between the beast's eyes. A spray of blood coated the girl's delicate, terrified features, painting her from white to red. A quiet whine exited the dog's wet mouth as it fell lifelessly on top of her.

Ivan lowered the rifle with a grim expression.

"What a waste of bullets."

 

*

 

The Ghost was rattled. She wrestled the canine corpse off of her, attempting to be rid of the wet stains running down the fabric of her dress. She knew the whole situation would be of much dismay to the Mother.

The Mother was an obsessive woman, afterall - she controlled everything about the girls within the Stonehouse. She stood at a lengthy 5'9 (without her strapped black heels, that is) and wore a perfectly-fitted dress, an unsaturated teal and white. Her hair was almost an olive hue and she meticulously flattened its bumps and curls, forcing it into a tight bun which pulled her features backwards. The Mother's pride and joy lay pinned upon her chest - a golden pin of some kind of bird that the Ghosts could not identify.  _The Commander gave it to me,_ she would always say. Everyone knew he was having an affair with her.

They despised the visits from the Commander as he - similarly to the wolves outside - circled the girls with malicious interest. More often than not, his guards would take one of them, ushering her into the cold leather interior of his car, driving her away to the Capital. Those went who went to the capital never came back to the Stonehouse. Whether that was a blessing or a curse, she could not tell.

 


End file.
